During their daily usage of a computer, users often perform many repetitive tasks that are batchable. An example of batchable tasks includes repeating essentially the same re-size operation on all of the photos in a particular folder on a storage device. A “batchable task” is an operation (e.g., re-size) that is repeated, but where a few aspects (e.g., specific photo file in a folder) vary with each operation. Batchable tasks may include essentially the same action repeated or may involve a repeated pattern of differing actions.
Some surveys have suggested that employees may spend as much as an hour in a typical workday performing repetitive operation, such as batchable tasks. Of course, a computer can be, and often is, programmed to perform batchable tasks. Unfortunately, many users do not possess sufficient technical savvy to program such tasks. Even if a user has the technical savvy to script a series of batchable tasks, many of those savvy users do not bother to take the time to write an appropriate script to perform a batch of the batchable tasks.
Moreover, few, if any, options exists for scripting a series of batchable tasks across multiple applications available on one of the many available GUI-based (Graphical User Interface) Operating System (OS) environments. Present solutions offer application-specific “macro” scripting capabilities within particular applications. For example, an application-specific macro can be run within a word processing application, such as Microsoft® Word. However, as the label suggests, application-specific macros do not operate across multiple applications in a GUI-based OS environment.
Furthermore, no present solution offers a way of automatically determining that a user is performing batchable tasks in a GUI-based OS environment, and then automatically completing a batch started by the user.